Nuruddin Farah

thumb|Nuruddin Farah Nuruddin Farah (born 1945) is a Somali novelist. His first novel, From a Crooked Rib, was published in 1970 and has been described as "one of the cornerstones of modern East African literature today". Farah has also written plays both for stage and radio, as well as short stories and essays. Since leaving Somalia in the 1970s, he has lived and taught in numerous countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Sudan, India, Uganda, Nigeria and South Africa. Quotes There’s a lot of things that you internalise when something is happening right in front of you. Your emotion is raw Studying dictatorship and writing about it and analysing it is something that requires either madness or bravery I had had enough experience of how society was dealing with my mother, how society was dealing with my sisters. How we, men, were being given privileges that girls were being given no chances to entertain I wasn’t doing it because I was feminist but because fair is fair I generally do not like to justify a text, a text speaks for itself The absence of the patriarch creates a matriarch who then represents that traditional oppressive system It wasn’t given the name ‘patriarchy’ when I was fighting that interference. I just knew this thing took a physical form and an ideological form, therefore I had to fight both Because you cannot torture the mind of a person, they torture the body I could not write in Somali because I became a known person in Somalia—my name could not be mentioned in the newspaper and I could not be quoted in the newspaper in Somali. So I was left with no choice but to continue writing in English. The majority of writers in Africa, of us, confine ourselves, rather than having great ambition Perhaps it was my generation interested in dictatorship and not the younger ones I come from a place where I question tradition. I come from a place where I say the elders have mucked up everything. I’m an aberration. When people mention my name, it is respected, but not many people have any idea what my work is really about There is a dual lineage to which Africans belong and that makes it easy: if you know African tradition you know Christianity My real true feeling is that Somalis are the least religious people on earth. How could anyone manage the destructiveness of Somalis towards one another? The killings that have been committed, the massacres within the country. If they believed in God, as truly as they should, they would not commit such atrocities among each other, especially among fellow Muslims. Therefore I question their honesty when they talk about religion, it is lip service that they pay to the faith If a character said something, I am not the one who said it! The majority of writers in Africa, of us, confine ourselves, rather than having great ambition’—An interview with Nuruddin Farah, by Lebohang Mojapelo 10 April 2020 Honestly, I don’t succumb to racism. I can understand somebody disliking me for some reason or another but somebody playing racist games with me it doesn’t make sense because I told you, you know, from a small age I was told you’re the greatest . . .which means “there is no one better than you” one has to be very cognizant of the fact that you can’t get away with mistakes. 5 Interesting Things We Learned About Nuruddin Farah from His Recent Interview 3 November 2023 ‘We must respect the individual for who they are and not where they are from If you send your dog out and it bites someone, you take responsibility What no one can reconstruct is the idea that was in our hearts, because there is mistrust among the people Nuruddin Farah in conversation with Binyavanga Wainaina 2018 I learned that the creation of a text was a process that required time, thinking, ingenuity, and self-trust. A major writer is one who has a greater vision than she or he is capable of capturing immediately my great mission in life became one of keeping Somalia alive by continuing to write about it; by turning it into a debate; by making Somalia intelligible to others, including Somalis. As a novelist, I usually think of myself as somebody who imagines that there are no secrets worth keeping, no taboo areas in human life I kept asking myself this question: What is worth being killed for? I take great pleasure in telling people I am a Somali The one thing that disturbs me, keeps me awake, gives me nightmares, is this falsehood we tell ourselves all the time: denying that we had anything to do with it I am willing to say that I, too, am an accomplice in the ruin of Somalia. Whether I conceived these works in Somali or in English, I will still remain the same person, and the ideas that informed my writing would have been the same While many other people still found it perplexing how Somali society treated women, for me it was and continues to be an invitation to dig deeper into the constitution of Somali culture The language is not the main issue; rather the key is, in the end, the ideas that carry the book What exile has done for me is that it has somehow freed me from the family constraint I’ve always thought that society could not be considered free, democratic, developed, let alone “civilized,” when a large segment is kept out of the mainstream of politics and life women ought to be given a central position in the life of the nation The leadership of Somalia ought to be placed in the hands of women and sympathizers to the causes of women in view of the fact we—the male society—have failed The current situation seems to underscore that women have proven to be far hardier than men until you accept that you are a criminal and ask for forgiveness from your God, your Creator, from the society at large, then I cannot accept you to be in a position of influence and power The right people for the new situation. What I am saying to you is this: Why is it that the people who are accomplices in the ruin of Somalia are still being asked to lead it? You cannot ask someone who destroyed a house, who burnt it down, to reconstruct it There is no value in having two million Somalis who are at the bottom of every society they join There is no use in those who continue talking about Somalia, gabbing about Somalia, without doing anything for themselves. Let them make something out of themselves, and maybe they will then do good for the rest Any human activity that involves more than two persons, and that touches on a topic that involves a third and a fourth party, is a political affair No writer can help another writer write These young people are the only hope that we have, especially the ones who have the opportunity to take control of their lives I don’t like very much any writer who ruins an opportunity by taking belated and transient political sides Interview with Nuruddin Farah n.d I don't know if I'm a nomad as much as a mover-about if I can't come back home then I will make the rest of Africa my country. there must be a reservoir of imagined and remembered details in one's memory if I am standing on the ground, I will not be able to see the ground I am standing on - as much as I can see the ground I am not standing on I'm usually very lucky in not having to bother about looking after the books; the books can look after themselves. The way things are, the secondary cannot take place until the first has taken place, but the first cannot continue in total ignorance of the second my interpretation of my work is as valid as that of any other reader, as every reader brings to the text his or her own experience. it is the African leaders I blame for, time and time again, not sorting out the problems internally Interview with Nuruddin Farah May 2000 I convince myself that I’m new to writing, that I am doing it for the first time, in the hopes of producing something completely, absolutely different I approach writing as though it were a game that I play alone, in a room by myself Writing, as a profession, is tedious, not very enjoyable. Nor is it highly appreciated, nor understood I continue having faith in the world I know as an exile, and I will continue writing about a country in which I cannot live, in a language that’s not my first tongue It is not the man, it is the system that creates the man We become replicas of the tyrant whom we hate What happens when you rid yourself of the monster? You become a monster. A woman who is trampled on, who is unable to speak her mind is not worthy of becoming a character in a novel written by an ambitious writer who thinks he or she knows what he or she is doing All societies are horrid to women, just awful Listening is a faculty lacking in many people, more specifically among men and among dictators When you listen, you arm yourself against your enemy It is small-minded to be too arrogant or to think you know enough If you listen, you won’t need to pull out a gun am hoping that peace will become more fashionable in my country Nuruddin Farah by Kwame Anthony Appiah 1 April 2004 The greater benefit that I received from my presence in India for four years is the patience towards work, is the communal commitment that people have towards one another, and the fact that India as a subcontinent contains the world! As long as I have lived somewhere in Africa, I didn't consider myself in exile. It's only when I lived outside the continent To understand a society, you have to have many different writers writing about it, so that each author gives you . you know . covers a certain territory Reflecting back, projecting forward: A conversation with Nuruddin Farah 2020 A lot needs to be done for us to promote the healthier aspects of our culture and to exploit the potential that is there Culture, when approached with a more progressive secularity serves as a well-rounded, less limited and less limiting way and not when we approach it from a narrow-minded, constrictive manner I am forever indebted to the Somali oral tradition the Somali oral literature will remain the poor cousin to the written tradition until we organize the recording and dissemination of it via the technological media that are available to us My feeling is that any text written with informed African sensibility belongs to African literature. INTERVIEW WITH NURRUDIN FARAH 18 January 2018 Our people do not comprehend writing because they do not understand the value of writing. This ignorance, however, is not their fault The marathoner who has not yet arrived at the finish line, though he can see it, cannot say that he has achieved his goal I am not a European, I am a Pan-Africanist To the young people of the new generation, I would advise them to also be the forerunners of future generations In the condition of the colonized there is no choice in the working language Ali Ahad interviews novelist Nuruddin Farah 8 December 2024 External links Category:Novelists from Somalia Category:1945 births Category:Living people